Why mums warm to Iceland

With 42% of British marriages ending in divorce, images of traditional families are slowly disappearing from our ads. From soap powder to stock cubes, brands have used such images as a way to engage with consumers since the dawn of TV advertising. But, given the rise in the numbers of single parents and working mothers, it would be somewhat ridiculous if advertisers kept up the pretence that nothing has changed. Crucially, in some cases it could alienate the very audiences they are trying to appeal to.

An example of the shift in approach is Iceland's use of Kerry Katona as its spokesperson. She is a mother of four, and a celebrity to boot - but, according to her critics in the press, an awful choice. Iceland certainly doesn't think so, however. To a lot of people's amazement - in January, the Daily Mirror and Sky News both reported that she was going to be dropped - the frozen food retailer has just confirmed that it is signing her up for another year as the face of its advertising.

Her critics argue that tabloid stories involving alleged drug use, debts and public breakdowns make her unsuitable for the job. They are missing the point, though. Katona is not being wheeled out as a role model - far from it - but as a personality that plenty of Iceland's customers can identify with. As well as struggling with her demons, she has experienced divorce and a second marriage, and had children with two different men.

Katona was a perfect fit when she was originally picked as Iceland's icon. A young mother, still married to a fellow pop star, she had also just won I'm A Celebrity ... Get Me Out Of Here! and a Mum of the Year award. To coincide with her arrival, the supermarket chain changed its tagline from the longstanding "Mum's gone to Iceland" to "So that's why mums go to Iceland!"

Now her troubled personal life means that Iceland has been left with a very different proposition. However, the company and its Manchester-based agency Tom Reddy Advertising believe that many consumers still consider her "our Kerry". Perhaps they view her as a rather bubbly, happy-go-lucky northern lass. This is certainly the personality that comes across in the ads.

The none-too-subtle approach the campaign takes may make some viewers shudder as if they were standing inside one of Iceland's freezer units, but it works. The latest TNS Worldpanel data, which tracks the grocery market year-on-year, shows Iceland's share up 11.6%. That is a good performance at a time when other retailers are struggling in the face of reduced consumer spending.

And while the commercials, now in their third year, are dismissed by commentators as cheap, who they are really aimed at should be taken into account. Iceland does not target an upmarket demographic, and perhaps the former Atomic Kitten's antics as played out in the tabloids help to raise its profile along with hers. After all, the ads are credited with having a high recall - not bad for a retailer with just 660 stores, representing 1.7% of the total market.

Although aimed at a very different demographic, BT's adverts have also moved with the times. In them Kris Marshall plays Adam, the boyfriend of Esther Hall's Jane, who already has two children. The ads follow Adam as he adjusts to his tricky role as stepfather-in-waiting, showing how he can use BT's services to ingratiate himself with his new family. It may not be the most realistic of campaigns - for one thing, the children are too nice - but it does at least reflect an authentic contemporary experience.

Some commercials using traditional families still survive, but they've received the 21st-century treatment. KFC recently urged fathers and children to give mothers a weekly rest from the chores. Its "mum's night off" campaign was criticised for being patronising. The main gripe was that the takeaway chain assumed that women still do most of the cooking in a household. What about working mothers? Do husbands never cook?

In fact, though, this is another instance of an advertiser mirroring modern lifestyles. If you do your research, and KFC marketers certainly will have done theirs, then you discover that housework and child care condemn millions of career women to much longer working days than men. According to a Cambridge University study last year, women who go out to work still do the bulk of household chores.

Two other campaigns, both created by McCann Erickson, similarly focus on strains in domestic life. Mastercard's current melancholic ad depicts fathers being "sacked" by their children for being absent. Targeting office-bound male executives who don't spend enough time at home, the credit card company shows them how to buy time with the kids.

And Bisto - which once epitomised warm, family-centred advertising with its famous Bisto Kids commercials - recently began pleading with consumers to set aside one night a week for a traditional sit-down meal, naturally involving gravy. Agencies such as McCann Erickson and advertisers such as Iceland, BT and Mastercard are simply repositioning their brands to reflect the times - however sad that may be to some.

· Dragons' Den star Peter Jones has been signed up by BT Business to help demonstrate what could happen if you don't have IT support.

Pitted against the Gremlins - the trouble-making critters that terrified smalltown America in the 1980s, pictured left - in an ad fittingly set on Friday 13th, the entrepreneurial guru is working in the office late at night. Things start to go wrong pretty quickly when the Gremlins come out and set to work pulling out and chewing wires. It does a fantastic job of showing you how bad things can get, but my guess is the ad may not work for everybody. Not because Jones isn't convincing in his role, but because it only depicts what can go wrong - not what BT could do to put it right. It's a risky strategy.